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Open Everything 2017
Open Source "Swiss Knife" - illustration by Open Source Business Foundation - licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licenseBack in 2008, I first posted here about...
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Why Create and Use Open Educational Resources?
I'm currently working on redesigning courses to use only Open Educational Resources (OER). Ever since I have worked in higher ed, whenever I have discussed open resources that are offered for free some...
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Want to Launch an Online Courses Business?
Having spent so many years in education, the idea of trying to launch an online courses business has never really been on my mind. What would you need to start an online courses business? I would...
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Defining Personalized Learning
The term "personalized learning" came up recently in several articles about Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his pediatrician wife Priscilla Chan investing hundreds of millions of dollars a...
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Learning and Working in the Age of Distraction
There is a lot of talk about distraction these days. The news is full of stories about the Trump administration and the President himself creating distractions to keep the public unfocused on issues...
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The UX of Course Design
I stumbled upon a post on Medium by John Spencer called "8 Ways UX Design Theory Transformed My Approach to Course Design - How a Small Side Project Changed the Way I Teach." As someone who has taught...
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Should You Be Teaching Systems Thinking?
An article I read suggests that systems thinking could become a new liberal art and prepare students for a world where they will need to compete with AI, robots and machine thinking. What is it that...
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Can a Course Not Have Learning Objectives?
Most teachers have stated learning objectives for their courses. They describe what we plan to teach and how we plan to assess students. You may have read this summer about a case involving whether a...
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Feedback on Student Writing and Using Mimesis to Teach Plagiarism
Instructors, especially those who do not teach writing as a subject, often struggle when it comes to making suggestions to students about what they need to do to improve their writing. I saw a survey...
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A New Kind of Core
Nicholas Lemann, in the December 2, 2016 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, wrote about what he is calling "a new kind of core curriculum." Lemann is a professor of journalism and dean...
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The Information Literacy of Fake News
Pre- and post-election last fall, there were many stories in all types of media about "fake news." An article in The Chronicleasks "How Can Students Be Taught to Detect Fake News and Dubious Claims?"...
View ArticleIs Our Group a Learning Community, Learning Circle or Community of Practice?
Though there are differences, you will often find the terms Learning Community, Learning Circle and Community of Practice used interchangeably. They are all groups of individuals who learn from each...
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Rhizomatic Learning
Rhizomatic learning is a way of thinking about learning. A rhizome, sometimes called a creeping rootstalk, is a stem of a plant that sends out roots and shoots as it spreads. One idea is that, like...
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Education Versus Training
Factory training, 1941Professional learning, often referred to as training, has been in companies for a long time. But as a history of training would show, that training is different from education...
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Learning Theories Into the Wild
I have been thinking about how some learning theories have gone "into the wild" in the way that some plants and animals have. People sometimes release pets, fish, birds or plants into the wild. Most of...
View ArticleAre All Schools Prep Schools?
What do you think of when you hear the term "prep school?" Do you think of elite, private schools that look and act like little Ivy League colleges?A university-preparatory school or...
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Innovative Teaching or Innovative Learning
I am preparing a keynote presentation innovation for a faculty at a community college. The campus recently opened a small innovation center with the hope of getting students and faculty to consider new...
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Active Learning
Active learning is an approach that strives to involve students in the learning process more directly. That sounds so logical that I suspect some people would say "Isn't that what every class is...
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PowerPoint Versus Narratives
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos writes an annual letter and in 2018 he repeated his rule that PowerPoint is banned in executive meetings. Bezos has also talked about this in public discussions. What...
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Digital Humanities and Open Pedagogy
I see that the Google Science Fair is back and, though many K-12 teachers are at the end of their academic year, this summer is the time to plan for what students could do in the fall. This seems like...
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